New Jersey’s labor department says Uber owes the state about $650 million in unemployment and disability insurance taxes because the rideshare company has been misclassifying drivers as independent contractors. Bloomberg Law News reports: Uber and subsidiary Rasier LLC were assessed $523 million in past-due taxes over the last four years, the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development said in a…
Tag: employment
Does The Green Economy Create More Jobs Than The Fossil Fuel Industry?
“Whereas the fossil fuel industry employs about 900,000 people in the U.S., green economy jobs — those associated with non-oil energy — number about 9.5 million,” writes long-time Slashdot reader DavidHumus, citing a new study by two researchers at University College London. On Ars Technica the study’s authors shared their analysis of America’s emerging green economy: According to new data, by…
The World’s Top Economists Just Made the Case For Why We Still Need English Majors
An anonymous reader writes: A great migration is happening on U.S. college campuses. Ever since the fall of 2008, a lot of students have walked out of English and humanities lectures and into STEM classes, especially computer science and engineering. English majors are down more than a quarter (25.5 percent) since the Great Recession, according to data compiled by the National…
Is Andrew Yang Wrong About Robots Taking Our Jobs?
U.S. presidential candidate Andrew Yang “is full of it,” argues Slate’s senior business and economics correspondent, challenging Yang’s contention (in a debate Tuesday) that American jobs were being lost to automation: Following the debate, a “fact check” by the AP claimed that Yang was right and Warren wrong. “Economists mostly blame [manufacturing] job losses on automation and robots, not trade deals,”…
Australia’s Buggy Automated System Suspended 1 Million Welfare Payments This Year
An anonymous reader quotes the Guardian’s report on last year’s update to Australia’s automated system for welfare benefits: Welfare advocates say the consequences have been disastrous… In 12 months, welfare payments were stopped an extra 1 million times… [A] recipient’s money is cut off automatically until they satisfy their job agency consultant that they are committed to looking for work… Consultants…
GitLab Won’t Exclude Customers On Moral Grounds, Says That Employees Should Not Discuss Politics At Work
GitLab, a San-Francisco provider of hosted git software, recently changed its company handbook to declare that it won’t ban potential customers on “moral/value grounds,” and that employees should not discuss politics at work. The Register reports: The policy addition, created by co-founder and CEO Sid Sijbrandij and implemented as a git pull request, was merged (with no approval required) about two…
New LGBTQ+ Courses: Free, High-Quality Resources for Allyship and Awareness
By Kyle Shiells, Data Science Manager & Queersera Co-Lead Queersera, Coursera’s LGBTQ+ employee resource group, celebrated its fourth anniversary at San Francisco Pride in June of this year. In the last four years, we’ve had the opportunity to not just march in Pride parades, but also host community events for Coursera employees, connect our team […]
The post New LGBTQ+ Courses: Free,…
Open Offices Are a Capitalist Dead End
Strudelkugel shares an op-ed: What was We thinking? That’s the only question worth asking now about the clowncar start-up known as The We Company, the money-burning, co-working behemoth whose best-known brand is WeWork. What’s a WeWork? What WeWork works on is work. The We Company takes out long-term leases on in-demand office buildings in more than 100 cities across the globe…
California Governor Signs Labor Law, Setting Up Bitter Gig Economy Fight
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a sweeping new law that could force gig companies like Uber and Lyft to reclassify their workers as employees. From a report: The hotly contested legislation, Assembly Bill 5, dictates that workers can generally only be considered contractors if they are doing work that is outside the usual course of a company’s business. The law codifies…
Whole Foods To Cut Health-Care Benefits For 1,900 Part-Time Employees Starting Next Year
Amazon-owned Whole Foods will be withdrawing medical benefits for hundreds of its part-time workers starting Jan. 1, 2020, the company said Thursday. From a report: In the past, employees needed to work at least 20 hours a week to buy into the health-care plan. Now they will need to work at least 30 hours. Less than 2% of its workforce, or…